Sunday, November 18, 2007

Podcasting

I listened to podcasts from the Denver Public Library, the Boulder Public Library and the Lansing Public Library Youth Services Department. I'm excited about the possibilities of podcasting for us at SPL.

Denver Public Library has podcasts of stories - some folktales and picture books, too. I'm curious about what, if any, the copyright issues are for these kind of podcasts. Some of the picture books were relatively recent so I'm assuming there had to be some kind of agreement with the publisher.

The Boulder Public Library teen section had students interviewing other students about different topics. The one I listened to was a middle school student interviewing three other middles school students about an art project - creating self-portraits from torn paper. This raises one of the drawbacks or something that has to be taken into consideration when deciding what to offer through podcasts. I kept wantint to see the self-portraits the girls had done as they spoke about them and I had no visuals! It was a far less interesting experience because I couldn't see what the students' work. I think the same applies for picture books - it's important to be able to see the illustrations. Although with picture books the family can always check out the book(s) so the child could look at the book while the story is being read. Will the child know when to turn the page?

For non-library podcasts I listened to one entitled Manager Tools in which two men discussed a managerial tool - use of persuasian. This type of interview - discussion about ideas/something that can't be seen - seems to work quite well with the podcast format. Having two people talking helps avoid potential monotony with one voice. Ricki has interviewed a number of authors - wouldn't it be great to podcast those interviews! I happen to think short and sweet is best - if the interview is going on for more than 15-20 minutes that's probably too long. But that's just my opinion and I'd be interested in what other folks think. We could also do author interviews in Youth Services. Kimberly Willis Holt was just here and she would have been a great person to interview. School classrooms (or individual students) that weren't able to attend her presentation could still listen to an interview. Another idea -- I know I mentioned in my first posting on blogs that I could see us having students blogging book reviews. We could also have students interviewing each other, librarians interviewing students, librarians interviewing teachers.....about books that are being read.

I'm amazed at how many libraries already use this technology and libraries that aren't that large - probably don't have as large a budget or as many staff as we do. From my perspective this is really something we should explore.

Now, how in heaven's name does one create a podcast?????

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